Petrified City (Chronicles of the Wraith Book 1)
Page 25
“I’m trying to destroy the wraith,” I explained, aware suddenly of how stupid it sounded. I shoved the knife back into my belt.
Harriet nodded. “Us, too.” She gestured to the two girls behind her, both dressed in a similar fashion and carrying huge assault rifles.
“That’s … noble of you.” I kept my tone as light as possible. “Do you mind if I ask you what your plan was?”
“Plan? I noticed that ever since their bodies became mostly solid, ordinary weapons actually slow them down. We were just going to start shooting and see what happened.” She grinned. “The man I took these guns from—that was always his favourite tactic.”
“Sadly, I don’t think it will work in this case,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed. “And you know what will?”
“Not exactly. I’m running on instinct and the desperate need to protect the people I love.” I dared a smile. “That’s kind of how I do things. I had no idea exactly what I was going to do when I stormed your prison a few days ago, but I just knew it had to be done. Dorien had to be stopped, or someone I loved would get hurt. Freeing you guys was a bonus. Thank you for the package, by the way. You didn’t have to do that.”
Harriet grinned back. “I did have to, and I’m sorry for scaring you before. We thought we were the only ones inside the tunnels. We thought you were the wraith.”
“Likewise. How did you know about this tunnel?”
“My father used to own a bar a few blocks from the Compound. There was an entry to one of these tunnels in his cellar, and I used to play in it as a kid. According to Dad, these tunnels were used to run alcohol down to the river during the prohibition.”
“And you remembered playing in the tunnels under the cemetery?”
“Not exactly. I used to run guns into the Hub for the Dimitri gang.” Harriet tapped the barrel of her rifle. “That was before Salvador Dimitri decided I needed a career change. I know these tunnels as well as the city streets.”
A shiver skated up my back. “Does that mean the gang uses these tunnels?”
Fuck, that meant Dorien would know. My chest heaved. Suddenly I felt shut in, claustrophobic. I didn’t want to die down here, lost in the dark.
Harriet shook her head, laughing her tinkling, girlish laugh. “No, I never told them about the tunnels. I believe a woman should keep some secrets close to her heart.”
I gestured down the tunnel where I could only just make out the faint light of May’s torch. “I couldn’t agree more. Will you join us? If I do anything untrustworthy, you can just shoot me with that giant fucking gun.”
“True.” Harriet turned to the other women. “Trudy, Jill. What do you guys think?”
The two girls nodded. Following Harriet’s lead, they pointed the barrels of their guns toward the floor, signalling they were going to trust me. For now.
“I’ll explain everything, as much as I can explain it.” I led the way down the corridor, jogging to catch up with May and Diana. While we trekked along, I explained what May had told me about the wraith, and how we could use the Mimir to send them back to the underworld. I left out the part about my strange power. It probably wasn’t wise to admit to one’s oddities in front of a girl with a giant gun.
May had stopped up ahead. Her mouth was drawn into a thin line, her knife pointed down the passage, likely surprised to see me chatting amicably with the heavily-armed girls. Diana cowered behind her, a knife in her hand but pointed down at the ground where it would do absolutely no damage whatsoever. May smiled when she saw us.
“I’m so glad you’re not a wraith,” May said. “And who is— Harriet?” Her whole face brightened.
Harriet pushed past me and threw her arms around May.
What?
“I … I thought I’d never see you again,” May said, her voice choked with tears as she embraced Harriet. “When Dorien took you away, I couldn’t bear it. I—”
“Then you don’t really know me at all,” Harriet replied, brushing a stray black hair from May’s face.
That tender touch told me everything I needed to know.
“What happened to your face?” Harriet asked, her fingers tracing the burns across May’s cheeks.
“I used the Mimir,” May said, her voice breathless. “I would have died, but Sydney saved me.”
“That makes two of us.” Harriet grinned back, placing her lips against May’s.
And all this time I’d thought May liked Cory …
But there wasn’t time for a heartfelt reunion. We had wraith to kill. We continued on down the passage, May and Harriet at the front, their fingers entwined together. Diana trailed behind them, her knife still clasped in her tiny hand. I followed Diana, and Harriet’s two henchwomen Trudy and Jill brought up the rear.
“Do we know where we are?” Harriet called back to me.
“Not a sodding clue,” I replied. “I did have a map, but it doesn’t seem to match up with the actual tunnel system.”
“It’s been a while since I’ve been in this part of the system,” Harriet said. “But I think we’re approaching the eastern corner of the cemetery.”
“We’re definitely getting close,” May added.
“How do you know?”
May pointed ahead. I peered around her and noticed for the first time that the end of the tunnel was swimming with a strange, milky light. The mortar between the bricks shone as though it were made of UV cement. My eyes watered at the memory of the white glare of the Citadel. Yes, we were definitely close.
We walked onward, the mood of the group stiffening with apprehension. We stepped into the milky light and followed it.
May didn’t need the torch any longer, so she tossed it aside and took back the scanner, fiddling with the dials to come up with a reading. “Particle density is thirty-seven.”
“Ah. Well, we must be right underneath,” I said. “There’s got to be a manhole somewhere …”
“There!” May pointed at a small, dark circle in the ceiling.
May, Diana, and I stood back. While Trudy and Jill steadied her legs, Harriet attacked the cover with the bolt cutters, and within a few minutes, she slid the heavy cover aside. Blinding light flooded the tunnel, and red spots danced in front of my eyes.
The girls boosted her up, and she clambered out. Her hand thrust back down the hole, and May grabbed it. I cupped my hands into a stirrup and hoisted May up while Harriet pulled her through. Diana was next, then the two girls, and then finally May and Harriet helped pull me through the hole.
I squinted as the white light surrounded me. It was even more blinding than I remembered, penetrating into my mind, wiping out all but the most base of thoughts. My senses felt dulled, obliterated in the white haze.
I tugged something from my belt and shoved them on my nose. A pair of dark black sunglasses I’d stolen from a husked corpse some months ago. They seemed like such a ridiculous thing to wear, but they helped a little with the glare. I could now make out the edges of shapes around us. We were standing in a corner of the graveyard. There were mostly low, older tombstones here, the edges crumbling away and the faces streaked with filth. I could see no large mausoleums.
“What do we do now?” Harriet asked, her hand cupped over her eyes.
“We have to get to the Mimir,” I said, pointing up to the apex of the dome. The light up there was so bright I had to divert my eyes.
“So we’re looking for a really high ladder?” Harriet lifted one of her impeccably arched eyebrows.
“Not exactly,” I answered. “I think … I think I have to be husked.”
Diana’s grip on my arm tightened. “No,” she whispered.
“I don’t know any other way to separate my soul from my body.” I looked to May for confirmation. In the light, I could just make out the faint nod of her head.
Diana’s lip quivered. “But you won’t come back.”
“Of course I will,” I said, but goosebumps raced over my skin. I highly doubted that it was true, which terr
ified me. I certainly didn’t believe May was right about me being a sorceress. But my own husking was the only way I could give Diana the life she deserved. A life free of fear and pain.
“So, we’ve got to find the wraith?” Harriet asked.
May pulled Harriet along the path. “They’ll be in the centre of the cemetery, near Webster’s mausoleum.”
I marched down the cracked path toward Webster’s mausoleum, my whole body rigid. I hadn’t articulated it to myself before Diana had confronted me, but I’d known ever since we left my apartment that I wouldn’t be leaving the Citadel alive. My soul would never survive what I was about to do. It couldn’t. But May was right. I was the only one who could stop the wraith, and in doing so, I would give them all a chance to live. Everyone I cared about would gain the closest thing to freedom they could have inside the wall. Diana … May … Harriet …
Alain.
My death would free him from the hold I had on him, the bond that tied us to each other and, in doing so, forced him to endure still more pain. Maybe, in time, after they were certain the wraith had gone forever, the government would tear down the dome, and he would be reunited with Raine, and he and May could be happy once again.
I’d had the honour of knowing him for a few short weeks, of knowing that even in the darkest hour of humankind, I was still capable of love. That someone was still capable of loving me. If that was all I carried with me into the next life, it was enough.
Something swirled on the path in front of us, startling me out of my thoughts. Bodies emerged from behind the gravestones, the familiar hissing chilling my bones.
“For fuck’s sake,” I snapped, stepping forward, deliberately thinking to antagonise them, to get one of them to husk me. “Get out of my way.”
“Not here,” May hissed in my ear. “We need to be closer. We need to find the Mimir.”
Shit. Now you tell me.
“You’ve come to stop us,” the wraith hissed. “You will fail.”
“Wanna bet?” Harriet opened fire.
The body of the ghoul crumpled on the path, its body riddled with holes through which a cloudy miasma unfurled. Four other wraith crumbled beside it.
“Move!” Harriet pushed me forward. “Those wraith will get up again, and more will come. We’ll keep them busy. You just get to that Mimir thing.”
I grabbed Diana’s hand and hurried down the path. Every step felt like moving through sludge. Behind me, the steady hammer of Harriet’s guns grew distant as we broke away.
More wraith poured from behind tombstones, their fingers grasping for me. But they seemed to be moving in slow motion, as though they were swimming through treacle. I ducked and weaved, dodging those decaying talons as they scraped at my chest. Ahead of me loomed a tall structure. It was impossible to make out any details through the glare, but I knew there was only one structure in the entire cemetery that stood more than a storey high …
More than a storey high …
Of course. The wraith would have placed the Mimir up high, but now that they were tethered to the earth, they wouldn’t be able to float up to it, the way they did to those globes they had been using to store their power. Of course The Mayor would insist it should be placed upon his monument, as high as it could be, overlooking their kingdom of the dead.
“The Mimir is on the top storey of the mausoleum.” I poured on speed, ignoring Diana’s protests as I dragged her behind me. I vaulted the low concrete wall and raced through the door of the mausoleum.
It was exactly as I remembered—the niches along the far wall for other family members, the sconces for candles and incense, the grand carved sarcophagus on its stone plinth. I raced toward the stairs, but as the whiteness shifted, I saw someone standing in front of them, blocking my path. I blinked in the white haze, trying to make out who it was.
“Hello, Sydney.” The black-cloaked figure grinned at me, tugging down its hood. “Hello, Red.”
It was Dorien.
24
“Step aside, Dorien,” I said, pushing Diana behind me.
He shook his head. “Sorry, Syd. I can’t do that.”
I raised my knife and took a step toward him, secretly wishing Harriet was behind me with her enormous gun. Even with everything Dorien had done, I didn’t want to kill him. That day in the brothel had shown me that taking life left me broken, and staring into Dorien’s eyes confirmed to me what became of broken people.
Dorien raised his hand, holding his palm to the sky. In the haze, I could just make out a dark shadow flickering across his fingers. It was like May’s and Alain’s fire growing from his skin, except instead of orange flames, this was an inky black fog, a trail of shadows that coiled around Dorien’s body like a viper. This wasn’t the usual power wielded by the Reapers. It was something darker, more insidious.
They twisted toward me, too, and just as those inky tendrils inched across my face, their very touch like cold and death and terror, they were yanked away. Dorien’s blazing eyes blinked. His face crumpled. Someone crashed into him and knocked him from the stairs.
“Go, Sydney!” Alain shouted, his black coat flapping around him as he held Dorien down.
“Alain!” I cried.
His body glowed with an aura of orange flames. They leapt from his skin and battled against Dorien’s shadows even as the two men grunted and struggled on the steps. Alain’s face twisted with agony. I knew he had to be drawing his power from the Mimir above, and that power would kill him as surely as Dorien’s shadows would kill me.
He was going to die to save me, to help me get to the Mimir. Either that, or he was going to kill Dorien and take upon himself all the guilt and darkness associated with taking the life of someone he’d once counted as his dearest friend. If I could, I had to save him from that fate.
But I couldn’t see what to do next. All I could do was watch helplessly as the men clamped their hands around each other’s throats, trying to drain the life from each other as shadow and flame battled over possession of their souls. It would be stupid to throw myself into the middle of that, and I might accidentally hurt Alain.
“I trusted you!” Alain cried, flinging the words at Dorien as though they were made of fire. “You were the only friend I had. You were the best man I’ve ever known, and now I see you were a monster in hiding.”
“If I am a monster, then you are a fool.” Dorien leered back as more dark tendrils rose from his shoulders and unfurled like wings, wrapping themselves around Alain’s body. “You have all the power. You could be the most powerful Reaper in the entire Order. And yet, you give it all away, wasting your time pining for a woman who left you, fucking an ugly human bitch, and babying a daughter who should have been a queen.”
Ugly human bitch, am I? Anger surged through me for what Dorien had done to Alain. I stepped forward, raising the knife and watching for my chance to strike. I wasn’t going to let Alain die, not for anything, not even for my own soul.
“Why, Dorien?” Alain gasped, his grip on Dorien’s throat weakening. “Why string me along ... for all these years, giving me friendship while you ... took everything from me?”
“Because it was easy. Because it was fun,” Dorien shot back, his fingers digging into Alain’s skin. “And because I wanted her. She will be my queen, the mother of a new Reaper race, the broodmare of a thousand sons who will not be confined by the Order’s rules and obligations.”
Alain’s face twisted with uncontrollable rage. His body flared with fire, the flames scorching Dorien’s dark tendrils, burning the shadows into nothing. Bit by bit, he drove Dorien away from him until they both struggled to their feet. Then with a surge of flame, Alain pushed Dorien toward the iron sconce on the wall where several sharp spikes furled out in the design of a sun.
At the last second, Dorien dodged both Alain’s fire and the spikes. “Oh, no you don’t,” he cried. He threw his head back and opened his mouth wide. A thick plume of shadow spewed from his lips and hit Alain square in the face.
He didn’t get up.
“Alain!” I cried, rushing for him.
But Dorien was faster. His long legs ate up the distance between us. He grabbed my hair and dragged me down, pulling me on top of the sarcophagus, pressing his weight against me to hold me down.
“Don’t worry about him, Syd,” he whispered in my ear. “His power will give us the last push we need. We’ll be able to break through the dome.”
Black tendrils inched over his shoulders, creeping closer to my face. One brushed my cheek, sending a wave of cold terror through my body. I kicked and struggled against the stone, but Dorien held me firm. Something icy clamped around my ankles.
“Why are you doing this?” I choked out, my face stiffening as the tendrils caressed my cheeks.
“Why do you think?” Dorien sneered back. “For ten years we’ve been trapped inside this wretched prison. I am ready to feel the wind on my face, the rain in my hair, to gaze upon something other than crumbling stone and dirty concrete. Don’t you want it too, Sydney? Deep down, don’t you secretly wish that I’ll succeed?”
The tendrils encircled my legs and arms—a cold vice squeezing the life from my body. Whatever this power was and however Dorien had acquired it, I realised with dread what he was doing—the darkness seeped into me, freezing in my veins, hauling itself through my body. It clawed at my mind, reaching in to cloud my thoughts, to steal the deepest, most precious parts of me. The life seeped out of me, death crawling through the shadows as they encircled my body. Dorien had all the power he needed now. He was going to the underworld to open it wide, and he intended to drag me with him.
What he didn’t realise was that was exactly where I wanted to go.
“I don’t!” I cried out. “I thought I did, but it was a lie. I have more to live for here in the dome than I ever did outside. And I will fight you to the death to preserve it.”